Two and a Half Men Fake GayFor the 12th season of the long running sitcom, Two and a Half Men, they’ve come up with an unusual plot that involves faking gay, faking gay marriage, and faking an adoption. I’m really not joking about this, and I’m not even sure if it’s considered offensive at this point. The network is claiming this storyline will help show the progress gay people have made in these areas. Some, however, have mixed feelings.

Speaking to reporters at the Television Critics Association’s summer press tour, CBS Entertainment chairman Nina Tassler said Walden realizes that it would be very difficult to adopt a child as a single, straight man. ‘So once and for all he decides, “I’m going to propose to Alan [Jon Cryer] and we’re going to get married and adopt a child as a gay couple.”,’ Tassler said. Describing it as a ‘great ride’, she said she views the storyline as a ‘very positive statement’ about the waves of gay rights across the US. She said she does not expect a backlash from the LGBTI community.

Sounds as if there could be a little gay baiting happening here. But I could be wrong about that.

It’s really just the repetition of an age old trope…faking marriage to avoid legalities. Sitcoms are notorious for this…doing illegal things for the sake of a laugh. They always have been. The most common has always been the illegal immigrant marrying for citizenship. This gay angle just adds a new twist that might turn out to be interesting if it’s handled with care and they do mention how difficult it still is for LGBTI people to adopt (or marry) in some places. In other words, if they don’t Hollywood it up and make it look as if all gays in the US have equality they might be able to pull it off. If they don’t handle it well I think there will be backlash.

GLAAD has already made this statement:

We hope the show will acknowledge not only the progress made in acceptance of gay and lesbian couples, but also the fact that – in many areas of the country – same-sex couples are often under greater scrutiny or still barred from adoption options that straight couples have.’ You see what I mean. Listen closely, Hollywood. We’re not all equal just yet. In fact, NOM and people like Theresa Santai-Gaffney in Pennsylvania are still trying to challenge gay marriage.

I received an e-mail about this last week but didn’t have time to post about it so I figured I’d do it now in case anyone’s interested. Amazon recently announced a new e-book subscription service where readers can get unlimited books for $10 a month. It’s being compared to Netflix and readers can choose from over a half million e-books. Some are blockbuster hits.

The biggest problem seems to be that the big 5 publishers are no shows.

So far, however, none of the five biggest publishers appear to be making their books available through the service.

HarperCollins, Hachette and Simon & Schuster, for example, are not participating, representatives from the three companies confirmed.

Penguin Random House and Macmillan declined to comment, but a search on Amazon suggests that they are not making their books available.

As a result, some popular titles were noticeably absent when the service began on Friday. Subscribers who want to read Laura Hillenbrand’s “Unbroken” or Veronica Roth’s “Divergent” will not find those books on Kindle Unlimited, at least not yet.

(Books that can be downloaded free as part of the subscription have an orange “Kindle Unlimited” icon under the title, along with a price tag of $0.00.)

You can read more here. I’m honestly not completely sure how it works or if I’m going to do it with my indie books…or even if my publishers are going to do it. For me, it all depends on whether or not I have to sign any exclusives with Amazon. I have nothing against Amazon. I just don’t like exclusives of any kind. I would sign the exclusive under normal conditions, even though I don’t like them. But I also find that because so many authors game the system on Amazon, making it unfair for authors who don’t, I need to have income sources like Smashwords and Allromanceebooks.

Visible Penis Lines

Ever since I posted about visible penis lines…VPL…I can’t seem to stop finding things about this topic. That happens sometimes for no explainable reason. A subject will follow me for a few days.

It won’t change your life but it might improve the quality of your life for a few minutes.

This is not going away. I wish it were, but it’s not. Some idiot accused Simon Cowell of being gay and now Cowell is trying to figure out a way to respond. I posted about all of it here.

A Simon Cowell spokesman said: ‘We are bound by contempt of court rules so cannot respond to these claims in the manner we wish to. ‘We are speaking to the Attorney General’s office – and we intend to make a statement in court as soon as possible.’

Author of over 100 published LGBT romance novels and stories, including AN OFFICER AND HIS GENTLEMAN and best selling VIRGIN BILLIONAIRE SERIES. Hates beets.
New Hope, PA Palm Springs, CA
ryan-field.blogspot.com